Catastrophic life-threatening flooding and mudslides, especially in areas of steep terrain.
The Central Pacific Hurricane Center placed Hawaii County under a hurricane watch at 5 p.m. Wednesday, with Tropical Storm Nolo centered 295 miles south of South Point and forecast to reach major hurricane strength before its closest pass this weekend. National coverage is running the track, the rainfall totals and the watch area, and none of it has mentioned that the island inside that watch has two buildings its own county says were built to take Category 3 winds.
What the 5 p.m. Advisory Actually Says
Public Advisory 14, issued jointly by the Central Pacific Hurricane Center in Honolulu and the National Hurricane Center in Miami, put Nolo at 14.7 north, 155.9 west, roughly 295 miles south of South Point and 475 miles south-southeast of Honolulu. Maximum sustained winds were 45 mph, minimum central pressure 1002 millibars, movement west-northwest at 6 mph with a turn toward the north-northeast expected late Wednesday night. Tropical-storm-force winds extended just 35 miles from the center. That is a compact system, and compact systems are the ones that spin up fastest.
The forecast is the part worth reading twice. Forecasters expect Nolo to become a hurricane by Thursday night and a major hurricane, Category 3 or stronger, by the weekend. Hawaii News Now reported that the closest approach to Hawaii Island is expected Friday night into Saturday. A flood watch already covers Hawaii and Maui counties from noon Wednesday through 6 p.m. Saturday. The rainfall figures carry the real threat: 15 to 20 inches across Hawaii Island with maximum totals near 35 inches, 5 to 10 inches on Maui with maximums near 20, and 1 to 3 inches across the rest of the state. Storm surge in Hawaii County is forecast at 1 to 3 feet above ground level, and CBS News reported the hurricane center’s own language for what that rain does to volcanic slopes: catastrophic, life-threatening flooding and mudslides.
The Two Buildings
In August, Honolulu Civil Beat asked all four Hawaii counties a direct question: how much wind can your emergency shelters actually take? Only Hawaii County answered with numbers. Reporter Hikari Mae Hida found that the county identified two facilities built to withstand Category 3 hurricane winds: Hilo High School Gym, and the Robert N. Herkes Gymnasium and Shelter in Pahala.
Two, for the whole island. Hilo sits on the northeast coast and Pahala sits in Kau, on the southern flank where the advisory puts the heaviest rain. Between and around them is an island the size of every other Hawaiian island combined, with communities in Puna, Kona and Hamakua that are hours from either gym on a good day and considerably further when the highway is taking 20 inches of water.
Three Counties Could Not Answer the Question
Honolulu, Maui and Kauai told Civil Beat the wind-rating information was either not tracked or not readily available. That is the finding underneath the finding. Hawaii County looks worst in the raw numbers only because it is the one county that produced numbers at all.
Oahu’s figures surfaced separately and are no better. Honolulu Department of Emergency Management Director Randal Collins told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser in March that 20 of the island’s 25 sites had been retrofitted to withstand Category 1 winds, the weakest step on the five-point scale. Hawaii Emergency Management Agency Administrator James Barros told the same paper the state’s shelters “are not at the levels of readiness that we require.” Maui Emergency Management Agency Administrator Amos Lonokailua-Hewett said his county’s shelters “are built to Hawaii’s high-wind building standards but are not designed to be storm-proof in extreme hurricane conditions.”
Two state legislators went on record in August asking for a public accounting. Rep. Kim Coco Iwamoto put it plainly: “Those are the questions that I think somebody needs to answer.” Rep. Diamond Garcia tied the request to the storm that had just missed. “Especially in light of the recent Hurricane Lala that barely missed us,” he said. “That should be made public.” A month later, three counties still cannot answer, and another storm is inbound.
A Doctrine Built for One Hazard at a Time
Honolulu’s emergency pages describe most of its sites as “refuge areas” rather than shelters, buildings that in the city’s own words “do not meet Hawaii’s guidelines for hurricane evacuation shelters.” The reasoning behind sending people there is flood reasoning. A refuge area beats staying put in a storm-surge zone, a flood-prone lot, or an older single-wall house that will come apart in wind. The wind rating of the refuge itself is a separate question, and for most of these buildings the answer is Category 1.
That logic holds as long as a storm is dangerous in one way at a time. Nolo is forecast to be dangerous in two. The same advisory that puts up to 35 inches of rain on steep terrain also carries the storm to Category 3. A family in Kau or Puna following the official guidance is being told to leave ground that floods and move into a building rated for a weaker storm than the one forecast to arrive. Each half of that instruction is defensible on its own terms. Nobody has reconciled them, and this weekend is a poor time to start.
The Emergency Was Declared Three Weeks Ago
Nolo is arriving inside a legal emergency that already exists. Governor Josh Green signed a statewide emergency proclamation on September 3 covering Hurricane Lowell, Hurricane Karina and Tropical Storm Marie, with an emergency period running through November 1. It activates the Hawaii National Guard, suspends the $10 million spending cap on the Major Disaster Fund, and streamlines procurement, contracting, permitting and hiring. It stops short of ordering evacuations, imposing curfews, or closing schools and businesses.
So the mobilization authority and the unlocked money have been live for three weeks, across three named-storm cycles, sitting on top of a shelter inventory that is the same one the Star-Advertiser described in March. Nobody expects a gymnasium to be structurally hardened in twenty days. The point is narrower and harder to wave away: an emergency declaration is the moment a state gets to act without its usual procurement friction, and Hawaii has been inside one since September 3 without producing so much as a published list of which buildings can take what.
Sixty-Seven Years Without a Test
The reason Hawaii Island has never had to find out is that no major hurricane has come close enough to ask. Only one, Hurricane Dot in August 1959, has tracked within 150 miles of the Big Island. Forecasters at weather.com wrote Wednesday that Nolo could deliver the island’s strongest hurricane lashing in 67 years.
That 67-year gap is also why the shelter question keeps losing budget fights. A hazard that has not materialized since the Eisenhower administration is easy to defer for one more cycle, and it has been deferred through a lot of cycles. This is the third close call in six weeks. Hurricane Lala took aim at the Big Island in August and destroyed roughly 100 homes before turning. Ten days ago Kauai faced Hurricane Lowell with five buildings the county itself says were never built as hurricane shelters. Each time the storm turned, and each time the turn got read as a result rather than as luck.
What the State Is Telling People to Do Right Now
The Hawaii Emergency Management Agency’s Nolo updates page was last refreshed at 11:35 a.m. Wednesday, with the next update scheduled for noon Thursday. It advises residents of southeast Hawaii Island to consider evacuating to a safer shelter, links out to the four county shelter dashboards, and notes that shelters “will be listed here as they are opened.”
As of the 5 p.m. advisory, it listed none. The page telling people on the most exposed coastline to go somewhere safer had not yet named a single place to go, and its next scheduled update lands roughly a day before hurricane conditions are possible.
What Should Happen Before Saturday
Our position: this is a budget choice that keeps getting described as a weather forecast. The wind ratings have been known since March. Two legislators asked for them in public in August. Three of four counties still say they do not track the number, which is itself the answer, because an agency that has not measured how much wind its shelters can take has decided that question is not urgent. Hawaii County, the one county that did the work, gets to look bad for its transparency while the others are shielded by not knowing.
The fix available this week is not concrete and steel. It is information. Publish the wind rating beside every shelter name on the county dashboards as they open. Label refuge areas as refuge areas so a family can tell the difference between a building that will keep them out of the surge and one that will hold through a Category 3. Say which of the two rated gyms will be open and staffed, and say it before Friday night rather than after.
Nolo may well turn, as Lala did and Lowell did. The forecast cone is wide and a compact storm at 45 mph has a lot of ways to disappoint the models. But a state that has now spent three storms in six weeks discovering it cannot answer a basic question about its own buildings is not being lucky in a way that lasts. The sixty-eighth year is the one to worry about.